A Question of Character - Personal Grooming

You can tell a lot from the cut of a man's suit.

I like gaming resources that give me little bits to think about throughout my week and don't take a huge amount of time to read or consume. Of course, I also blog, and by blogging, I mean I produce a product that provides a service at direct odds with that first concept. What is a blogger to do?

Oh, I know, I'll combine my powers with the tool made for the job - Twitter! Now, I'm already on Twitter (@HopelessTweeter thankyouverymuch), but to be honest, I use the thing mostly to read the musings of other bloggers and game designers from whom I enjoy many little snippets throughout my workday. In an effort to return to the Twitter fold, I'm launching a new project for myself.

I'll be tweeting a question with the hash tag #aQoC which, when spelled out stands for "a Question of Character" once a day, every weekday (Monday through Friday). At the beginning of the week I'll be posting a theme for the week's five questions. As you can see, this week's theme is personal grooming. The concept behind aQoC is that no fictional character is truly defined by just one particular characteristic. Original inspiration can be drawn back toward Dread. The player characters of Dread are created entirely through the use of a 10 or 15 question worksheet for the player to fill out. The questions, prepared by the GM, are leading and establish a broad archetype that the player then makes their own.

I don't see why we can't draw some similar questions for characters in other games whether it's World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu, Dragon Age, or D&D 4th Edition, there's always room to flesh a character out just a little more. The problem you bump into is that often a GM is presented with pages and pages of backstory - completely unusable.

So these questions, some leading, some very general and open, are designed to help both myself and the other chronic players out there to think about the things that truly define our characters. Along with each Monday's new aQoC theme, I'll be doing a write up of the previous week's questions and why I chose them. Obviously I don't have any to reflect on for this week. However, I will say that, much like Mr. Wayne at the top of this post, the way a character presents himself says a lot about the character. Grooming, personal hygiene, sense of style - they all help build a better picture of the character both literally as well as helping to flesh out what they choose to prioritize in their life. Does the character prefer to be primped and well-kept, or does he wear whatever street clothes will allow him the most mobility and freedom of motion, regardless of how they make him look?

I don't expect people to respond since really these questions are designed to be little nuggets of inspiration, but if you've got a thought on the theme or a specific question, please feel free to respond to me on Twitter or in a comment here. Again, you can follow along with the questions by following my twitter account - http://twitter.com/#!/HopelessTweeter - or you can follow along simply by checking out my Twitter feed at the top of the left hand column.